Akamai intros cloud Web app firewall service

BANGALORE, INDIA:Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leader in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today expanded its cloud-based suite of security capabilities with the introduction of its Web Application Firewall managed service.  Implemented on Akamai’s EdgePlatform, the world’s largest distributed computing system, the service provides a scalable edge defense system for blocking Web application attacks in the cloud. 

Based on the open source ModSecurity Core Rule Set supported by Breach Security, the Akamai Web Application Firewall service is designed to protect against the most common and harmful types of attacks and exploitation techniques such as SQL Injection, Cross Site Scripting (XSS) and other Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top-10 attacks. 

The Akamai Web Application Firewall service provides customers with a unique approach to easily and economically defend their Web applications.  With no hardware to manage or maintain, customers manage their own security rule set through Akamai’s customer portal.  Additionally, the Akamai Web Application Firewall service helps enable Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard compliance.

As enterprises have increasingly migrated from the desktop to the Web – relying more and more on the Internet for mission-critical data and operations – the scale and severity of attacks launched on Web sites and applications have continued to grow.  Estimates show that cyber crime now cost businesses approximately $1 trillion a year. As research reveals, the enormity of this expense is due in large part to the fact that more than 95 percent of corporate Web applications have severe vulnerabilities.

“While threats to network and information security will always exist, the complexity and scale of cyber attacks is exploding, forcing enterprises to face the daunting challenge of defending an increasingly porous perimeter,” said Tom Leighton, co-founder and chief scientist, Akamai.  “Cloud-based security offers an innovative approach to helping organizations overcome the limitations of traditional perimeter solutions by adding a globally-distributed layer to their defenses.  We believe our service is also essential for cloud computing, as infrastructure is shared across multiple customers.  When leveraging shared computing resources, it is vital that your application does not become compromised by an attack directed at another enterprise.”

“The Akamai Web Application Firewall service is designed to secure enterprises at the HTTP application layer by enabling both instantaneous scaling of defenses as needed, as well as filtering of corrupt traffic as close to the attack source as possible,” said Andy Ellis, chief security architect at Akamai.  “Attacks vary in degree from small and devious, to large and brute-force; and Akamai’s Web Application Firewall is the right architecture to address both.  We’ve defended customers from application layer attacks on the magnitude of over 100 Gbps, demonstrating that massive distribution at the edge is critical as malicious activity grows in size and complexity.